


Wander’d Mony a Weary Foot

by wemadguys



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 11:09:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17263157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wemadguys/pseuds/wemadguys
Summary: A little check-in with Mulder and Scully as they ring in the new year





	Wander’d Mony a Weary Foot

**Author's Note:**

> Written LAST year, pre-s11, because I forgot to upload it to here then and it's finally become relevant again!

Mulder braves the roads to go into town for a gallon of milk and some batteries. He forgets the milk but returns with a bottle of drugstore wine, a pack of noise-makers, and two conical party hats adorned with little fireworks and the phrase “happy new year!” scrawled all the way around.

“Celebrate good times, come on, Scully,” he says, facetiously, snapping the string from one of the hats under her chin. She opens her mouth to protest, prepares to roll her eyes and reach up and rip off the offending accessory. But then she looks up at him and sees his gentle smile, his face full of mischief and good humor. They’re lucky, really, to be under the same roof again. Lucky to be alive. Maybe there is something to celebrate.

Half-smiling, she replies, “Well, Mulder, I hear that there’s a party goin’ on right here, maybe even a celebration to last throughout the years.”

They’re too removed from the world to put much stock in its traditions, its holidays, its superstitions. But there’s something about the coming of the new year to which they’ve always been drawn. The discarding of the old, the broken, starting fresh. An opportunity for self-reflection. Hope for the future.

They’re big suckers for hope. It’s all they’ve had, during some of their more trying times. Tonight they’ve got it in spades, perhaps aided by that entire bottle of wine they consumed over a dinner which was light both in regards to their chicken salads and the easy camaraderie between them.

She’s in the kitchen as It’s nearing midnight, 11:54 according to the oven’s clock, and they’ve been dozing on the sofa in front of the Hitchcock marathon on Turner Classic Movies for the last few hours, a wine-induced haze relaxing their limbs and drooping their eyelids. She returns to the couch, two freshly topped-off drinks in hand, and discovers that Mulder’s awake, staring blankly ahead of him.

“Here,” she says, offering him a cocktail he didn’t request. He takes it, automatically, but otherwise doesn’t acknowledge her. Still standing, she waves her hand in front of his eyes. He finally perks up and seems to notice his drink for the first time. “Where’d you go?” she asks, folding her legs under her as she settles in next to him.

“Did you know, Scully, that they say people who drink a lot of gin and tonics are more likely to be sociopaths?”

“Clickbait isn’t good for you, Mulder.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve never been good for you, yet look where we are.”

“Mulder,” she responds, worried, as she brushes her hand down his spine, “I’m here because I choose to be, and you know that. It’s almost midnight. Let’s leave this in the past.”

“We can’t just forget our past, Scully. It follows us everywhere, is there to haunt us every time we catch our reflection in the mirror.”

"Will you turn it to Dick Clark, please?” she deflects, not wanting his sudden nihilism to spread to her, before grabbing the remote and doing it herself.

“See? That’s precisely what I mean. People still tune into New Year’s Rockin’ Eve every year, out of a sense of loyalty, of tradition. Yet Dick Clark died years ago, and lost control of the production probably many years before that. As much as we all want fresh starts, the passage of time is an unrelenting thorn in our side.”

She raises her eyebrows. "That’s bleak, even for you. What’s the matter, Mulder?” she asks, reaching up and stroking his face with the backs of her fingers. He sighs, leans back into the cushions, and into her touch.

“I’m old, Scully,” he confesses, closing his eyes as she begins ghosting light kisses over his forehead, his eyelids, the light stubble covering his jaw.

“You’re not old,” she tells him, and lays her head on his chest, feels his arms snake around her. The banner on the bottom of the television reads 11:58.

“I am,” he insists. It’s her turn to sigh, and the time changes to 11:59, the on-screen countdown to midnight beginning in earnest.

“Well, if you’re old, I’m old.” He smiles at that, and she traces her hands along the wrinkles of his face, the ones she knows well but doesn’t see when she looks at him, can’t see, even. She’s known him too long, and too well.

She wasn’t lying to him, though. She doesn’t think he’s old. And she doesn’t feel old. She feels grateful.

He interrupts her musings as the seconds count down. 30, 29, 28… “We were young together, once.” Her lips turn up in a smile to match his, rueful, wistful, nostalgic. Hopeful.

Behind them, the countdown finishes, and Auld Lang Syne starts to play. She sits up further, until her face is even with his. His arms squeeze her tighter.

Thinking of a night from a lifetime ago, one which marked a different sort of new beginning for them, she whispers, still smiling, against his lips. “I remember.”


End file.
